The Radical Possibilities (and Fears) of 50/50 Parenting

A few weeks before my daughter Naima’s tenth birthday, she, her father, David, and I began family therapy. It was recommended in response to some emotional challenges Naima was having. I’ve known for a long time that one of her issues is the fact that David and I aren’t together. She has complained to me that she’ll never see us celebrate an anniversary, and once she cried when a classmate teased her for having a sibling with a different mom.

I went into the sessions hopeful that they would curb Naima’s need to be in the presence of her father and me simultaneously. Her therapist (yes, Naima has her own therapist; anyone who lives with me must have one) called this out soon after meeting her. Naima, her dad, and I went to breakfast together once after we all moved to Los Angeles, but we hadn’t done anything as a trio since. I don’t have a problem spending time with Naima and her father, but I hadn’t given any thought to making that a priority. I suppose something feels dishonest to be out in public as a group and maybe I just don’t want people assuming that we’re a family. We are family, but we’re not a family. Not a unit.

Yet the three of us being in therapy together made sense. The choices that David and I have made have had a complicated impact on Naima, and it seemed only right that we sit together and help her sort through her emotions. I thought it would be healing for us all. As I drove, solo, to our first session, I reflected on how far we had come. There was a time when I couldn’t imagine sitting across from David to do anything, let alone heal, but for the past decade my daughter’s father and I have peacefully shared in the rearing of our glorious child with few battles waged between us. The journey has been complicated at times, but I am so proud of where we are. The two of us are deeply committed to Naima’s care and we are often collaborative in our parenting efforts. We get along like friends, or maybe cousins who are super cool, just not particularly close.

That is not how things started.

When Naima was nine months old, I did an interview with mater mea, a platform dedicated to Black motherhood. I spoke candidly about loving Naima and being single: “At the time I was incredibly in love with this person who was no longer in love with me. ... There was a lot of shame because I was going into motherhood single—it wasn’t that I was in a relationship that ended during the pregnancy, or right after the pregnancy, or two years later.” I was very honest about how I felt regarding David: “We’re both committed to raising a strong and healthy girl. I’m very happy that she has a great relationship with her dad. I may hate the man, but I don’t hate the dad.”

As time went on, things got easier and easier between David and me. When he confided in me that his hours had been cut at work, I hooked him up with a gig doing freelance graphic design where I was working as an editor. He was excellent at it, and I was proud of myself for being mature enough to look out for him (which, considering that I relied upon his biweekly financial support, was also looking out for myself).

My loved ones were shocked at how I was able to get along with David. wasn’t angry anymore, so I had no reason to be hostile. He was obviously doing a good job caring for our child, which is all I could ask. And I wasn’t in love with him anymore. The feelings were gone. As difficult as it is to admit, David marrying his wife, Jehan, is probably what gave me the push to get over him. Had he remained single, or merely dated her, I very well might have held out hope even longer that we would reconcile.

When Naima was three and a half, her brother started attending her day care. At the time, this made me anxious—would Jehan and I run into each other?—yet, I was grateful for the sibling discount and the fact that I could always call on David to pick Naima up if I needed him to because he had to go to the school anyway.

The annual school Kwanzaa performance had rolled around once again. David and I spoke to each other, as we always did, before he went to his side of the auditorium to be with Jehan, and I went to mine. But this time, when the show was over, I approached them and the children. “Are you all staying for dinner?” These were the first words I ever spoke to Jehan. We were never formally introduced. We just started communicating from that point on.

It was slightly awkward at first, but eventually, we began to build a friendly relationship of our own. My parenting journey improved markedly when I started interacting with Jehan, though I do not regret the years in which we didn’t talk. I know now as I knew then that I simply wasn’t ready, until I was. As mom and stepmom, we began communicating regularly about Naima, exchanging pleasantries, occasionally chatting about a movie or TV show here and there. Before long, I realized that I liked Jehan as a person, and that we might have become friends had we met under different circumstances.

About a year later, I started a conversation with David and Jehan about leaving New York. After all my NYC media success, I had seriously gotten it in my head that I was going to write for film and TV and thus belonged in Los Angeles. I didn’t think they’d want to move there, so when I first brought up the idea of moving, I mentioned Oakland as a happy medium. Turned out, they were about as ready to leave the Big Apple as I was. They came back to me and countered with LA, so I ended up getting what I wanted without having to ask for it directly.

Prior to our move, Naima spent two nights a week at her father’s house: Wednesday and Saturday. However, my schedule often required me to ask her dad to take her for an additional day, usually to accommodate either a late-evening panel discussion or some kind of work trip. Shortly before we left for California, David asked if we could have a more 50/50 arrangement. For years, I’d been terrified that he’d ask for joint custody. I thought anything close to an even split would put an end to his financial support, or worse yet, be a setup for him to one day make the case that he was the more fit parent and that Naima belonged at his house permanently.

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We had never been in the Family Court system and nothing about his moves over the years foreshadowed either of those things happening; still, I remained fairly shook. Nevertheless, we started the new arrangement in Brooklyn, continued it in LA, and Naima has peacefully been shuttled between our two houses ever since. For the most part, she spends Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday nights with her dad and the rest of the week with me. This has allowed me to enjoy quality time with my baby while also affording me time to have some semblance of a social life.

I do still feel a bit of guilt about the amount of time my child and I are not together. For most of her life, she hasn’t been able to rely on seeing me each day. There have been times when I’ve wondered if she’s needed more from me than she’s gotten. I’m literally not used to seeing my daughter every day of the week. When the negative self-talk kicks in, I start thinking perhaps somehow this makes me less of a mother.

I vowed when Naima was born that she would not be the entirety of my life in the way I felt I was to my own mother. It was important to me that I continued to further my career, have time with friends, and, of course, date, so that I could find someone to save me from baby motherhood. Co-parenting with David has allowed me to honor that commitment to myself. Naima is my top priority; nothing means as much to me as she does. But, throughout her entire life, I’ve done a lot more than simply mother her. I think this has been essential to my survival.

Balance hasn’t always been easy. There was a time when I regularly dropped my baby girl off at day care with a suitcase in my hand, rushing to fly off to a speaking engagement or work commitment. Sometimes these trips would require me to miss a scheduled day or two with her. I once got back late from Atlanta after speaking at Morehouse College, only to miss the first part of a school recital. From 2014 to 2018, I ran myself ragged trying to parent and make the most of the professional opportunities coming my way, while still turning up on weekends. I experienced a tremendous burnout that impacted me deeply over the next few years.

Still, I am grateful for the fullness of my life during Naima’s early years. I’m so glad that motherhood wasn’t the only thing that defined me, and that I didn’t have to care for her all by myself, especially when I compare my experiences with mothers who don’t have the benefit of an active co-parent. Hell, I know married mothers who didn’t seem to have as much parenting support or be granted as much solo time as I had.

True co-parenting relationships allow single mothers the space to prioritize themselves and to live lives that don’t revolve solely around caretaking.

Maybe my version of motherhood looks selfish to some people. The fact that I get days off each week may be inconceivable to a mother who has cared for her child every single day since they were born. But I know the value in being able to have a life separate from Naima. Until we moved to California, I thrived professionally, traveled regularly, and had a full and active social life. I think it means a lot that for so much of her formative years, Naima got to see me as a whole person. I’ve always let her know that she was the center of my universe, but she’s also clear that there’s more in that universe than her. I hope if she chooses to become a mother herself that I have set an example for how to be both/and. Motherhood is laborious work and I am proud to perform it. I just need more to feel truly satisfied—to feel truly myself.

I want so badly for more families to consider an arrangement like what David and I have had throughout Naima’s life. Fathers should have a role in their children’s lives that is bigger than what can be experienced every other weekend and on holidays. Whenever possible, both parents should take a primary role in caring for their children. The heavy lift of parenting during the school week, when kids must be woken up early and fed, and later helped with homework and fed again, shouldn’t belong exclusively to mothers. There’s been much made of the fact that Black men are more hands-on with their children than other men, whether they live inside or outside of the child’s home, which is wonderful. But there are still too many sisters doing the majority of the child-rearing primarily by themselves, if not entirely so.

True co-parenting relationships allow single mothers the space to prioritize themselves and to live lives that don’t revolve solely around caretaking. But there’s a caveat: Single mothers must also be aware that in order for this arrangement to flourish, it requires placing trust in your child’s father and his ability to parent. Men are not socialized to be caregivers, and, in most cases, it is assumed that the mother is simply better suited to take care of a child. We all default to that thinking. But, let me tell you, even if you make a better pot of chili or can cornrow your child’s hair, it doesn’t mean that her father can’t try. He should.

When a responsible man is willing to divide childcare responsibilities, word to the wise: Let him do it. You may parent in different styles or feel critical of the way he does one thing or another, but that is all right. Being in control of every detail in your child’s life just because you are “better” at some things cannot compare to the value of having both of their parents present in genuine, meaningful ways. Having learned so much from my experience with David as a co-parent, I try to earnestly encourage any single mother with a baby daddy who wants to step up to push aside bruised egos and broken hearts enough to allow it to happen. I need to shout this from the mountaintop: The reward is your child’s—but also yours.

The success David and I have had in co-parenting helped me tremendously when it came to healing from the pain of losing him. I no longer view the end of my romance with him as a failure. As I’ve stated before, I’m now able to see our time together as the means to an end, a process we had to go through to get our incredible daughter. When I look back, I see our incompatibility clearly. I can be honest about the fact that when I was with David, I mostly devalued the relationship, but when I got pregnant, I needed him to stay so badly because I didn’t want to be a single mother. Holding on would have represented freedom from baby mama shame and would’ve been the manifestation of the nuclear family I always wanted—and losing that was devastating. But what I’ve ended up gaining has been so beautiful, so radically affirming in ways I couldn’t have known was possible.

As I worked on the finishing touches of Single. Black. Mother., I’d just ended a six-month situationship with “Richard.” He told me a few weeks earlier that he’d had some recent conversations with his child’s mother about reconciling their romantic relationship. Part of me felt as though I should have stepped back, but I didn’t want to. He told me that his feelings for her had not changed—he resents her for “trapping” him with a baby when she said she was on birth control—but now he was wondering if being together would be best for his son. Perhaps foolishly, I agreed to continue seeing him while he sorted things out.

I wondered if I was betraying the baby motherhood by continuing to see this man. He’d promised me that he and his ex weren’t sleeping together. But what does that really mean? Shouldn’t I want her journey to be easier than mine has been? Ironically, it’s the fact that David didn’t choose me that has somehow also factored into my decision to keep our thing going. I’ve been a single mother the entire time I’ve been a mother and I’ve done just fine. Our child is just fine. This woman would be just fine, even if her baby daddy ends up with someone else, as long as he parents their child. Right? Right?

I’ve always let my daughter know that she was the center of my universe, but she’s also clear that there’s more in that universe than her.

I gifted Richard a copy of Emma Johnson’s The 50/50 Solution, which makes the case for parents who are not together to divide child-rearing duties as evenly as possible. I wanted him to consider that the solution might not be partnering with a woman he claims he’s not in love with, but instead, simply having more time with his son. In the introduction, Johnson writes:

Imagine a world where the time, expense, and emotional labor of parenting is automatically shared equally between men and women, undoing millennia of sexism to the benefit of every parent and—most importantly—every child.

 I argue for a rebuttable presumption of equal parenting times—what I call 50/50 parenting throughout this book—when parents live separately. That means that when parents do not live together—whether they divorce, move apart, or never lived together in the first place—it is assumed that parenting rights, time, and responsibility are shared equally.

She goes on to say that while many families across the country have begun embracing a 50/50 arrangement, the majority of children are still being reared primarily by mothers, with 80 percent of custodial parents being moms and no less than 25 percent of all American children growing up without active fathers. This is certainly reflected among the single mothers I know. David’s and my joint custody situation that we’ve worked out without any judge or lawyers still feels extremely rare.

Johnson argues that when it comes to most separated families there is an antiquated dynamic that mirrors the old image of the mother as housewife and father as breadwinner; the mother is the “primary caregiver” and the father, via child support, is the “primary breadwinner.” I do disagree with her here, slightly; most men who pay child support are not the primary source of household income for their children’s moms. The average monthly child support payment in the United States is $478. Forget what you’ve heard about the exes of famous people; in most households, child support is barely enough to keep the lights on.

Still, I do concede that the caregiver/provider dynamic between moms and dads is largely to our detriment. “This model is the root of the pay, wealth, and power gaps that plague women, and the gaps in mental, physical, and spiritual health that plague men,” Johnson writes. She points to studies that show that children raised in 50/50 households have outcomes comparable to children raised in two-parent homes, and that among separated parents who share children, those raised in 50/50 scenarios fare better than those who spend the majority of their time with one parent.

I have a bit in my stand-up routine about women who refuse to let their capable, competent exes have more time with their children: I call them “masters of self-sabotage.” But I also acknowledge that it’s difficult to let go of the traditional image of motherhood, which means being your child’s main parent. For years, I was afraid that if David and I were doing things evenly, I would be less of a mother. Having Naima the majority of the time meant I was a good mother, doing what good mothers do. Y’all, let me tell you how grateful I am for our current arrangement. The time that I have to myself allows me to fully show up for my daughter when we’re together, and the gift of her being parented equally by both of us bears fruit every day. I also suspect that Naima will have a healthier relationship to men and dating when she gets older because she truly knows her dad.

I am passionate about more Black co-parenting families shifting toward a 50/50 dynamic, or as close to that as they can get. It’s time for more of us to abandon the every-other-weekend arrangement that is so popular among separated parents. You can’t raise someone you see every other weekend. Or even every summer. Dads need to be in the trenches; they need to see just how unpleasant their kids can be when they wake up for school in the morning. If you have your kids every other weekend, you’re waking up and taking them to IHOP! It’s not fair!

When I was a kid, my mom suspected that I liked my father more than her. That was never the case, but we did have a very different dynamic. She made me do homework and dishes, while Dad took me out to brunch on Sundays. Even if your baby daddy isn’t a police officer like my father was, tell me: What kid wouldn’t choose the good cop over the bad one? By sharing a child’s time more equitably, parents can avoid this dichotomy—and their kid can find them equally annoying!

This excerpt, adapted from Black. Single. Mother.: Real Life Tales of Longing and Belonging by Jamilah Lemieux (Roc Lit 101, 2026), appears by permission of the publisher.

Jamilah Lemieux is a cultural critic and writer with a focus on issues of race, gender, and sexuality. A leading feminist thinker, social influencer, and millennial media darling, Lemieux has written for a host of platforms, including the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, Essence, Playboy, The Cut, The Guardian, Colorlines, The Washington Post, Wired, Self, Refinery29, and The New York Times. She was prominently featured in Lifetime’s docuseries Surviving R. Kelly and Surviving R. Kelly Part II: The Reckoning. She also appeared in A&E’s Secrets of Playboy. Lemieux penned the forewords for the anniversary editions of Michele Wallace’s Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman and Ann Petry’s Miss Muriel and Other Stories. Currently, she writes a weekly advice column for Slate’s “Care and Feeding” parenting section. She resides in Los Angeles with her daughter, Naima.